About the worst thing you can be called nowadays is "racist." The word not only brands a person as intellectually and morally inferior but links him or her to hooded sickos who beat and lynch innocent minorities. And the accusation--whether merited or not--often brings stinging penalties, from shunning to firing. Ask Senator Conrad Burns, Andy Rooney, Jimmy the Greek, Marge Schott, or Christina Jeffrey. No wonder people who subscribe to liberal social and intellectual ideals, who abhor race prejudice, fear being branded with the scarlet "R."

Since the term carries so much social opprobrium and can hurt a person's private life and public career, it should be defined clearly and used cautiously. This is not the case, however, on today's college campuses. The examples in this essay suggest that on college campuses across the country the epithet "racist," hard enough for dictionaries to define (see "Defining Racism," Chronicles, August 1994, 46), has become alarmingly unmoored.

We have now reached a point where the term can be used, usually without explanation or justification, to stigmatize any policy, statement, symbol, statistic, outcome, word or expression that any minority member does not like, including all kinds of legitimate, scholarly, and protected material. As Robert Hughes observes in The Culture of Complaint, the irresponsible and promiscuous use of "racist" has robbed the term of "whatever stable meaning it once had" (19). Even worse, since its use is sanctioned by the subjectivity of the user, there can be no false accusations of "racism." In short, anyone accused of "racism" is ipso facto guilty.

As a result, the epithet "racist" has become a powerful weapon of intimidation, the contemporary equivalent of the l950s charge of "communism." Since nobody on campus wants to be labeled a "racist," and since nobody knows what the term means, most people stay clear of saying or doing anything that some minority member may label as "racist." Out of fear, most people--and especially whites--studiously avoid touchy issues, provocative statements, or ambiguous symbols or behaviors. Unfortunately, as the examples in this essay show, not everybody succeeds in avoiding trouble. An untoward statement, a word or metaphor or observation, even an unpalatable research finding, can catapult a student, faculty member, or administrator, into the category of "racist" with regrettable results.
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